News

Troy story

The study of the Trojan war attracts geniuses and nutcases in almost equal measure - not to mention more than its fair share of charlatans. For the rest of us, it's hard to decide where brilliant inspiration stops and woeful delusion (or sharp practice) starts. The dividing line between "I have found the actual site of Homer's epic conflict" and "I have found a few paltry foundations and a handful of arrowheads that I am hyping for all they are worth" is hard to fix.

The 19th-century controversy over the remains of Troy is a familiar one. Heinrich Schliemann, an obsessive, self-promoting sales-man-turned-archeologist, claimed to have unearthed Homer's city at the mound of Hissarlik in western Turkey. William Gladstone was among the enthusiastic converts who gave Schliemann plenty of the 19th-century equivalent of air-time. Many others remained vociferously unconvinced, partly